With shorter deadlines and reduced music budgets now the norm, especially in TV, composers need more help than ever. A new L.A. firm offers assistance by crafting sounds to order.

Umlaut Audio creates “custom software instruments and custom sounds for composers,” explains co-founder and CEO Marc Juenger. Especially in TV, he notes, “they have three or four days to write as much as 30 minutes of music,” and so much of it sounds alike because many are drawing from the same widely available sample libraries.

“We create unique sounds for their specific project,” adds Marc’s wife Anne Juenger, co-founder and COO of the company. Clients can also choose whether the sounds created can be exclusive to them on a permanent basis; for a specific time period; or not at all.

They do not deliver music, Marc Juenger emphasizes. “The composer creates the music. We offer sound design,” although within that definition, many musical sounds can be the basis. He noted that composer John Debney, preparing to create mockups of his planned “Jungle Book” score, asked for the sounds of sampled Indian instruments.

Umlaut built instruments and libraries for composer Christopher Lennertz on two of his recent films, “Ride Along 2” and “The Boss.”

“As a composer writing music for multiple genres and using electronics combined with orchestra,” Lennertz says, “it’s really important to not only have great sounds, but also great sounds that are custom built to give a score a personality of its own. It’s also imperative that the interfaces are intuitive, since there’s no time to be ‘learning’ while we’re chasing deadlines.”

Based in Sherman Oaks, with a full-time staff of four and a list of freelancers they can employ, the Juengers ask for a minimum of three days to prepare sounds but can spend months on a job if necessary.

“It’s a process,” Marc says. “We will send (sample) sounds for a sound aesthetic first, so that we really know what (the composer) wants, and then we can make revisions. It’s like working with an orchestrator. It’s a team. We listen, work with them, and figure it out.”

Part two with living legend of electronic music focuses on sampling, delays, and how to keep music making fun

Berlin, February 25, 2016 – Native Instruments today released the second video in their two-part feature on pioneering composer, performer, songwriter, and producer Jean-Michel Jarre. The video continues the conversation from the first, in which Jarre traces his musical history, and in so doing, the history of electronic music. Now, coinciding with the upcoming release of Part 2 of his Electronica album project, Jarre takes us through the evolution of sampling and delay technology throughout his decade-spanning career.In part two, Jean-Michel Jarre first talks about the origins of sampling. As a young musician, Jarre started with analog tape recorders – the most advanced technology available at the time for recording, manipulating, and playing back sound. Jarre explains how the Fairlight sampler inspired his pioneering album Zoolook, for which vocal samples were chopped and arranged to create the sonic bed. Another major development in sampling technology, says Jarre, was KONTAKT. He explains how KONTAKT “is not only a sampler, it is also the platform from which you can create new instruments.” He also stresses the importance of sampling one’s own sounds, insisting that “even if it’s not as good technically, it will have something personal which can’t be replaced.”Jarre also talks in depth about delays, calling delays and echo chambers his “second instrument”. He talks about his favorite delays, using “two Revox’s to do delays with analog tape,” and how this texture makes up nearly half of his seminal album Oxygen. Jarre also explains how he was never able to find the clarity and space of these analog systems with plug-ins until he heard REPLIKA, replacing some of the plug-ins he was already using on final mixes with the NI delay. At the end of the video, Jarre shares advice acquired over decades. He talks about how the different solutions and fresh inspiration he gets from Native Instruments products make him feel like “a kid in front of new toys”.

And it is this challenge of mastering new tools that keeps music making fun.